Welcome to our Trash 2 Treasure world! It is our hope to encourage and inspire others to reuse, rebuild, revamp and reinvent by sharing our ideas in this blog.

Brand new, donated from a retail source. Really COULD have been used just as I found them.

But they are VERY heavy and bulky looking, and I felt compelled to ‘lighten the look’.

Look at that weight!! Almost FOUR pounds per frame!!! And the opening for the picture part is only 4″ x 6″; so it’s not a BIG frame!. Like I said, heavy and bulky.

So I painted them all a soft off white; then they sat for a few months!

Got them back out last week to work on them. Blobbed (yes BLOBBED, that Is the technical term!) on some Ralph Lauren tobacco glaze; enough to cover it well and get into all the cracks and crevasses.

NOTE: Be sure you work on just one frame at a time!! The glaze sets up quickly, so you have to work quickly. After applying the glaze I take a big old paint brush with bristles all spread out (the kind you’d usually just throw away!) With this brush use a ‘scrubbing motion’ all over the entire frame. This will remove some of the glaze from the raised parts of the frame AND work it down into the crevasses more. The above picture IS what it will look like after this step’ more evenly distributed.

Next you need a soft cloth. Any kind EXCEPT paper towels will do. The glaze is a little sticky and you’ll get paper stuck to your piece if you use paper towels. I keep a box of rags on my craft table; old towels, T-shirts etc cut up into small pieces for single use) With your soft cloth, wipe off the glaze on all the raised areas, as much as possible.

This will just leave the glaze in the crevasses.

You can wipe away more if you want as long as it’s still tacky enough. I try to let mine cry overnight before using; but a few hours is sufficient. It will be ‘dry to the touch’ in about 20 minutes.

Well, I TRIED to get them ‘side by side’ for comparison!

A much ‘softer’ look now, no?

I wanted to put ‘something’ in the frames, but wanted it to be simple and inexpensive enough that someone who wanted ‘just the frame’ would still buy it.

Kraft paper and some vintage dictionary paper and a couple of little scrapbook embellishments were quick, easy and inexpensive to add.

I SHOULD have been more creative and done each frame differently, but I had three of the ‘love’ cut outs, so I did all three the same’ in the spirit of Valentine’s Day.

Just off the top of my head, I don’t remember what I priced that piece at. And Stars is a 2+ hour round trip, so I can’t ‘dash over and check’. And it could well be sold by the time I get back out to my booth next week. sorry.